Western Short StoryThe Rattler RoundupLee Bond

Western Short Story

Without warning “Long Sam”
Littlejohn leaped over the lip of the cut, his gaunt figure plunging
down through the murky dawn. His boots were aimed at the stocky man
who was there in the cut, crouched down to light the pile of brush he
had stacked across the shining steel rails.

The crouched man heard the sound of
the plummeting figure, jerked his derbyhatted head around sharply. He
cried out, tried frantically to roll away, pulling at a gun tucked
under the tail of his gray coat. But Long Sam Littlejohn’s attack
had been too swift. Outlawed, with a sizable reward offered for his
dead-or-alive capture, Littlejohn knew how to move
around without drawing attention to his actions. He felt his boots
slam the stocky man, heard the gun the derbied gent had pulled go off
with a thundering crash. Then Long Sam was tumbling along the cindery
grade, bony hands clamped to the black butts of his own six-shooters
to keep them from spilling out of holsters.

“Hold it, Fry!” he yelled.

The stocky man was wallowing around
on the ground, cursing dazedly as he hunted his gun. His derby hat
was gone, jarred off by the jolting he had taken.

“Joe Fry, Deputy U. S. Marshal!”
Long Sam droned. “So you’re one of the arsonists behind the
trouble Pat Casey is havin’ on this hundred miles of railroad of
his?”

Joe Fry’s square-jawed face was
white with rage, twisting as if the frayed cigar butt in one corner
of his cold-lipped mouth had been dipped in quinine. His blazing eyes
sought Long Sam, who had stalked up and was standing above him.

“You crane-legged imitation of a
human bein’, you’re under arrest!” Fry squalled. “What was
the idea in tryin’ to stave my back in? You sneakin’—”

“Shut up, Joe!” Long Sam
interrupted coldly. “For more years than I like to remember you’ve
hounded me, blamin’ me for every low-down crime that’s committed
here in Texas. You hate me because I’m the only man you ever went
after and didn’t manage to kill or capture. But seein’ you here,
gettin’ set to wreck one of Pat Casey’s trains, makes me wonder,
Fry, if you haven’t pulled most of the sneakin’ crimes your
constant harpin’ gets me accused of.”

Joe Fry spat the ruined cigar stub
out of his mouth, got up slowly, and stood brushing cinders from his
suit.

“Tryin’ to accuse me of
attemptin’ to wreck a train, are you?” he panted finally. “I
stepped off that Sleeper hoss of mine out on top of the cut yonder, a
half hour ago,” Long Sam said. “I watched you pile this litter
across the rails, Joe. You had a match struck and was ready to touch
that stuff off, when I landed on you.”

Joe Fry reached down, picked up his
derby and sat it on his head. He looked, Long Sam thought, a lot more
like a successful business man or drummer than the nervy man-hunter
he actually was.

“Get busy, Joe!” the gaunt
outlaw bit the words out. “Yuh’re pullin’ this mess apart and
throwin’ it off the track!”

Fry snorted through his button nose,
cursed Long Sam roundly, then seized the mound of brush and began
pulling it off the tracks. Long Sam grinned faintly, eased down to
where Fry’s sixshooter lay behind a steel rail out of the
badge-man’s sight, and picked the gun up. “If I had my hands on
that gun, you noose-dodger, you’d sing a different tune!” the
deputy flung the words out hotly.

“Shut up, and get to pitchin’
brush!” Long Sam grunted. “I hear the train comin’. I want to
see what’s under that brush, Joe.”

“There ain’t anything in this
mess of junk that’d wreck a train, and you know it!” Fry howled.
“I heard that you were in Buckhorn last night, up yonder where this
road Pat Casey stole joins the main line. I got a tip that you’d be
on this southbound log train this mornin’. I aimed to stop that
train, snake you off it.”

“I haven’t been to Buckhorn in
six months,” Long Sam snapped. “I was down yonder in Big Point
last night, where this road of Pat Casey’s touches the Valley
Limited line run by Wilson Brule and his thugs. Did Brule hire you to
wreck this train on Pat Casey’s line, Joe?”

Joe Fry got so angry he looked sick.
Long Sam wanted to grin but forced himself to scowl instead. Joe Fry
was as honest as they came, and certainly would not stoop to a thing
like wrecking a train. Long Sam was not at all surprised when Fry
wrathfully flung the last piece of brush off the tracks and stood
there glaring triumphantly over the fact that there was no dangerous
obstruction of any kind on the rails.

“Now, Littlejohn, are you
satisfied?” the deputy panted. “Are you willin’ to admit that I
wasn’t aimin’ to do nothin’ but stop that log train?”

“You’d have had plenty of time
to roll a half dozen big boulders down here to the rails before the
train showed up,” Long Sam droned. “Hike to the south end of the
cut, yonder, before that train gets here. Because of such tricks as
you tried here, Pat Casey has armed guards on all his trains. They’ll
blast us if they catch us in this cut!”

Joe Fry blinked a couple of times,
then trotted down to the south end of the cut, Long Sam at his heels.
The gaunt outlaw ordered him to turn left into timber along a slope.
They were barely out of sight when the whistle on the approaching
train began screaming, and as it swept past Long Sam and the deputy
both saw heavily armed men crouched atop the massive logs that were
boomed to flat cars.

“They’d have shot the liver out
of me!” Joe Fry said hoarsely as the train roared past.

“The engineer and the fireman saw
that brush and knew somethin’ was wrong,” Long Sam grunted. “The
screamin’ whistle alerted the guards. They saw the brush there in
the cut, too. So did the conductor and that brakie I saw on the tail
end of the caboose.”

“What are you gettin’ at, you
slabsided hellion?” Joe Fry glared.

Long Sam grinned widely now. “What
I’m gettin’ at is that you’re under arrest, and that all the
fellers on that train will turn up as witnesses at yore trial!”

“Arrest?” Fry squalled.

“Take a look at this, Joe,” Long
Sam chuckled.

“A badge!” Fry sounded as if he
were strangling as he stared at the small goldand-silver shield.

“That’s right, Joe,” Long Sam
said, pocketing the emblem. “I signed on with Pat Casey last night.
Pat says I’m a special agent, or detective. Maybe he’ll raise my
pay, right sudden, when I waltz in the hecoon of the arsonists who
have been tryin’ to make him knuckle under and sell his little road
to the dirty-dealin’ Valley Limited outfit that’s run by your
bosom friend, Wilson Brule!”

Fry broke off, scrubbing a hand
nervously over his blunt chin. Long Sam prodded him with a gun
muzzle, started him up the slope through the timber.

“You’ve knowed Wilson Brule ever
since he was a hood-wearin’, backshootin’ thug in the murderous
gang that called themselves State Police, after the Civil War was
over,” Long Sam growled. “Wilson Brule was a lieutenant in that
pack of organized terrorists. He stole such a fortune from men he
helped murder that he built his Valley Limited railroad up the Rio
Grande to Big Point.”

“Alright, Littlejohn!” Fry
groaned. “I’ve had experience enough as an officer to know that
you’ve got me in an embarrassin’ position.”

Joe Fry was surprised when, little
more than an hour later, Long Sam Littlejohn herded him boldly down
the middle of Big Point’s crowded street to the stone building that
served as combination county jail and sheriff’s office.

“This crowd!” Fry gritted as he
dismounted.

“I don’t like the crowd around
here, either,” Long Sam droned. “But I hear Pat Casey is in the
sheriff’s office, and I’ve a hunch he’s here to tell about that
brush his train crew and guards seen. Let’s go in and clarify
things for ‘em, Joe.”

The crowd split apart, men spreading
back so hastily they stumbled against each other. Long Sam looked up
into the startled eyes of rawboned Ott Sheppard, the Big Point
sheriff. Behind Sheppard, his round, seamed face mirroring complete
astonishment, was little Pat Casey.

“Howdy, Pat!” Long Sam grinned
at Casey. “Over here reportin’ what your train crew and guards
seen out in the cut just above Bull Crick?”

“The crew and guards said there
was considerable dry brush in that cut, Sam, and figured somebody
planned on another of my trains gettin’ wrecked,” Pat Casey
gulped. “But, boy, this man you’re holdin’ a gun on is Joe Fry,
a Deputy U. S. Marshal workin’ out of Austin!”

“And the galoot who piled that
brush on the tracks,” Long Sam grunted. “I caught him startin’
to set it on fire.”

“But glory to goodness, Sam!”
the railroad man gulped. “Fry is an officer of the law!”

“Somethin’ is all snazzled up!”
the sheriff groaned.

“Ask Joe whether or not I caught
him startin’ to fire that brush he had piled up in the cut!” Long
Sam grunted.

Ott Sheppard'sdeep-set black eyes
rolled uneasily and a flush crept over his craggy face. He shook his
head, looking from Joe Fry to Pat Casey.

“Since when, Casey, did you start
hirin’ professional thieves and killers like this Littlejohn
noose-dodger?” Joe Fry piped up. “And howcome you’re standin’
around suckin’ your thumb, Sheppard, when you ought to be pumpin’
slugs into this bounty-plastered Littlejohn hellion? If I have to get
tough about his—”

“Alright, Fry!” Ott Sheppard cut
in grimly. “You’ve been hangin’ around town here for over a
week now, shootin’ off your mouth about me bein’ too thickheaded
to stop the trouble between Mr. Casey and that Wilson Brule buzzard.
I’ve seen you hangin’ around Ned Witcher’s Planters’ Palace,
chinnin’ with Witcher and them two gun-hung men of his, Bull
Packard and Cal Zigler. Ned Witcher and his bunch are in Wilson
Brule’s hire, even if I can’t prove they are. Come on, Fry, and
try one of my cells for size!”

Joe Fry’s face got white with
rage. But he finally nodded to indicate that he would submit to being
jailed, then turned and put his raging eyes on Long Sam.

“I’ll remember this, you
animated beanpole!” he said thickly.

“You’ll be busy enough thinkin’
of other matters before my lawyers are through with you, Fry!” Pat
Casey snapped. “I’ve had two of my special agents workin’ some
time, now, to see how many men around here are hooked up with Wilson
Brule. It happens, Mr. Fry, that my men have definitely established
the fact that Ned Witcher and his men go into a secret huddle with
Wilson Brule every time Brule comes up here from his headquarters at
Sinking Ford.”

“Yeah, and that Brule cuss is in
town now,” the big sheriff scowled. “Come on, Fry. Soon as I get
you locked up, I’ll take a pasear around to that Planters’ Palace
dive of Ned Witcher’s. Maybe I can corner Witcher and Wilson Brule
and bounce a few questions off the tricky sons!”

“Joe, who gave you the phony tip
that I was in Buckhorn and aimin’ to ride that trainload of logs
down this mornin’?” Long Sam asked.

“I’ve got nothin’ to say to
you now, Littlejohn!” the deputy marshal rasped.

Fry stomped away, the big sheriff
following him, scowling uneasily. The sheriff returned to his office
very quickly, sleeving sweat off his face.

“For a rookie detective,
Littlejohn, you don’t mind fetchin’ in a live tiger!” Pat Casey
said tensely.

“And look what a picklement I’m
in by talkin’ Pat into hirin’ you, Sam!” the sheriff groaned.

“Simmer down, both of you!” Long
Sam snorted. “Here, take Fry’s gun, Ott. Just keep your lips
stiff around Fry, and don’t let the little cuss scare you. I think
he will be glad to forget this whole thing by the time we turn him
loose.”

“Turn him loose?” Pat Casey
asked sharply. “Littlejohn, you didn’t walk Fry in here on
trumped-up charges, just to keep him off your neck, did you?”

“Joe didn’t aim to wreck that
train,” Long Sam said evenly. “There wasn’t anything but small
brush on the track, which wouldn’t have stopped even a handcar,
much less a train load of sawlogs.”

“Then Fry told the truth about
only aimin’ to stop the train, hopin’ to nab you?” the sheriff
asked hopefully.

“Absolutely,” Long Sam declared.
“And he’d have been shot to ribbons by those guards if I hadn’t
got him out of there before the train came along.”

“Glory, lad, that’s the truth!”
Pat Casey cried.

“Fry would have been killed, sure
as thunder,” the sheriff nodded.

“Hangin’ around Ned Witcher’s
fancy Planters’ Palace, Joe got in somebody’s way,” Long Sam
droned. “They handed him that phony tip that I was in Buckhorn and
would be on the log train this mornin’. Whoever gave Joe that tip
must have given him the notion of stoppin’ the train with a fire on
the tracks, knowin’ he would be shot to pieces by the armed
guards.”

“Sam, I’ll bet you’ve got the
right slant!” the sheriff said excitedly. “I’ll hustle back
there and try to make Fry see what kind of a shenanigan was pulled on
him.”

Pat Casey nodded his white head.
“I’ll help you talk sense into him, Ott. But you better wait out
here, Sam.”

When the two men had gone, Long Sam
slipped out to the nowdeserted street. He saw faces peering
cautiously from doorways and dusty windows. The gaunt outlaw’s eyes
traveled down and across the street to Ned Witcher’s Planters’
Palace, and suddenly a grim smile touched his lips.

Ned Witcher was standing there in
front of his ornate honkytonk—a short, fat man with a cigar stuck
in one corner of his thick-lipped mouth.

Leaning against the building front
beside Witcher was Bull Packard, a burly, thick-necked man wearing
two guns low on his massive thighs.

Cal Zigler was there too, standing
in the Planters’ Palace doorway. Because of the shadows, Long Sam
almost overlooked the tall, big-shouldered gunman. But he saw him
now, and could faintly discern the white blotches that were the ivory
grips on Zigler’s low-slung six-shooters.

“Somebody in this crowd that was
banked around here run and told Witcher that I had fetched Fry in,”
Long Sam mused. “People quittin’ the street, the way they have,
may mean they think Ned Witcher and them two killers of his are set
for war.”

Witcher said something to Bull
Packard, who then followed his short, fat boss into the doorway of
the establishment. Long Sam sauntered across the dusty street. He
turned east towards the front of the Planters’ Palace. He swung to
a halt before a jewelry store window, apparently attracted by the
display within.

But from beneath the brim of his
hat, Long Sam was again watching the Planters’ Palace. He could see
the shadowy outline of Ned Witcher’s face over the cutaway doors
and knew that Witcher was watching him.

Long Sam pushed his hat back,
scratched his head and glanced toward the door to the jewelry store,
as if having trouble in making up his mind. Then he gave his
shoulders a shrug, stepped to the door and went in.

And to the open-mouthed amazement of
the young clerk within, Long Sam was out the back door as fast,
comparatively, as he had come in the front door slow. Dodging rubbish
piles and discarded packing cases, Long Sam got to the Planters’
Palace without sighting anyone. He tried the back door, it opened,
and the gaunt outlaw let himself into a room that was cluttered with
cases of bottled goods, beer barrels, discarded furniture.

“Ought to be another door up here
somewhere,” Long Sam grumbled, feeling his way cautiously along a
rough plank wall.

A board squeaked so close to Long
Sam he recoiled in mingling alarm and astonishment. He heard faint
thudding sounds then, and realized he had groped in beneath the
stairs that led from the barroom and dance hall up to the private
gambling rooms on the second floor. Ned Witcher’s office was also
up on the second floor, and Long Sam had a hunch that the dive owner
was heading for that retreat.

Long Sam struck a match, and a few
moments later found the door he sought. He turned the doorknob and
looked out into a narrow runway that led behind the long mahogany
bar.

A beetle-browed bartender was at the
forward end of the bar, facing the street doors. A double-barreled
scattergun was leaning against the inside of the bar near his knees.
There was no one else in sight, and Long Sam ghosted in behind the
bar. He slid a gun out of a holster and slanted the six-shooter up at
the barman.

“Don’t touch the scattergun!”
Long Sam’s voice was a rasping whisper.

The barkeep jumped violently, flung
his head around as he saw Long Sam’s twisted grin and leveled gun.

“Well, well,” Long Sam droned.
“Moss Burton, sure as sin! Last account I had of you, you were
makin’ a livin’ by bushwhackin’ men who happened to have
bounties on their hides.”

“You never packed a badge,” Long
Sam grunted. “Where’s Ned Witcher and his two shadows?”

“Listen, Sam, I’ve been on duty
since midnight, and I don’t know where they are,” Moss Burton
growled.

“You’re still a liar by choice,
and a back-shootin’ murderer at heart!” Long Sam said coldly.
“Ned Witcher, and likely enough Bull Packard and Cal Zigler, are
upstairs! Witcher left you to blast me with that scattergun in case I
started through the front door.”

A buzzer whirred sharply, three long
bursts.

“That’s the boss, wantin’ me
to fetch drinks up to the office!” Moss Burton gulped. “If I
don’t show up with the stuff, him or one of the others will—”

He broke off, pale eyes rolling
uneasily behind swollen lids.

“Witcher and his two pet killers
ain’t here, remember?” Long Sam taunted. “But don’t argue any
more, Moss. Slide past me and head for the stock room.”

Moss Burton slogged forward. He
stomped on past as if he meant, to do as he had been told, but Long
Sam was not taken unawares when one of Burton’s big feet suddenly
lashed backwards in a savage drive and he opened his mouth to roar a
warning to the men upstairs.

Long Sam’s six-shooter bounced off
his bristly head. The one-time bounty collector flopped down on his
face, breath gusting from his sagging lips, senseless.

Long Sam holstered his six-shooter,
picked up the shotgun at the far end of the bar. The buzzer cut loose
again, and suddenly Long Sam was hurrying out from behind the bar and
across the room. He took the stairs three at a time and was making
the last leap to the upstairs hallway when a bullet hit him across
the ribs, spinning him half around.

“Littlejohn got in here somehow,
Boss!” Cal Zigler was yowling.

Zigler's gun was popping again, and
as Long Sam lost his balance and fell he saw the big-shouldered
killer crouching before an open doorway. A slug from Zigler’s
pistol ripped the hat off Long Sam’s head, and a second burned the
tip of his right shoulder.

Then the scattergun in the gaunt
outlaw’s hands let loose and Cal Zigler was crashing backwards into
the doorway.

Long Sam plunged to his feet, teeth
set against the pain of the wound in his right side. He heard wild
yells coming from the open room, which he now recognized as Ned
Witcher’s office. A gun went off in there, and Long Sam hunched
down low, hurtling the buckshot-riddled body of Cal Zigler.

But even as Long Sam sprang into the
room, a bullet slammed against the shotgun in his hands, slapping the
weapon out of his grip. He folded at the knees and hit the floor,
whipped his six-shooters from holsters and began firing.

Bull Packard was charging behind a
pair of spitting guns, cursing hoarsely. The big man quit cursing
suddenly and his mouth sagged open, spilling a cascade of blood over
his chin and shirt front as he sank slowly down to the floor.

Long Sam’s slitted eyes swung, for
a gun was still spitting at him from a far corner of the room. A
bullet slapped across his left cheek. He saw Ned Witcher wedged in
behind a huge iron safe, and to Witcher’s right, squatting behind a
thick bookcase, was Wilson Brule, owner of the Valley Limited
railroad.

Wilson Brule’s thin,
sallow-skinned face was smeared with blood, and he was daubing at it
with a handkerchief.

Long Sam felt a bullet skim across
the top of his head and ducked so violently he bumped his nose on the
soft rug. He jerked his head up and caught Ned Witcher hopping out
from behind the safe, beginning to grin in triumph.

Long Sam fired two rapid shots, one
from each gun. Ned Witcher’s mouth flew open, and suddenly he was
pitching down to the floor, blood spilling from two bullet holes
fairly between his pale eyes.

“Alright, Brule!” Long Sam
called hoarsely. “This is once you’re caught in the open. Waltz
out, and let’s head for jail!”

“A buckshot cut my forehead wide
open, Littlejohn,” Wilson Brule said calmly. “But this is no
fight of mine. I only dropped in for a visit with Witcher, and was
caught in the fracas.”

“You’re also caught by the seat
of your fancy pants, with a charge of hirin’ arsonists to strike at
Pat Casey’s railroad!” Long Sam droned.

“Because that hundred miles of
railroad old Pat built is everything but a penny-ante, two-bit
layout!” Long Sam snorted. “You held a franchise, but figured a
hundred miles of rails connectin’ your Valley Limited with the big
line to the north would never payoff. You sold old Pat the franchise,
and had everybody laughin’ at him thinkin’ he was a fool to lay
steel out across those hills and valleys. But Pat laid the rails—coal
minin’, lumberin’, stock raisin’ and farmin’ sprung up along
his road—and now you want it back.”

Wilson Brule walked out into the
room, blue eyes coldly mocking as he mopped blood from a deep gash
across his narrow forehead. Looking at him, seeing the man’s
complete confidence, Long Sam wondered bitterly if this shrewd devil
would be able to wiggle free to go on plotting old Pat Casey’s
downfall.

“Funny thing is, Brule—I only
came up here to have a talk with Ned Witcher,” Long Sam droned. “I
think Witcher sent Joe Fry out to pull a stunt that was supposed to
be the death of Fry and a heap of trouble for Pat Casey. You dreamed
up that stunt of havin’ Joe Fry try to flag one of Casey’s
trains, knowin’ the guards would kill Fry. I was hopin’ Ned
Witcher would admit that.”

“Sure, Ned Witcher and his two
thugs are dead, Brule,” Long Sam shrugged. “But I wouldn’t crow
too soon, if I was you.”

Long Sam heard boots coming up the
steps and moved away from the door, smoky eyes watching Wilson Brule
stiffen. Then Sheriff Ott Sheppard and Pat Casey were coming into the
room, shoving Moss Burton ahead of them.

“Sam, you’re lookin’ like a
stuck pig!” Pat Casey shrilled. “But you’ve shot the daylights
out of Witcher and his two killers, that’s certain. And look what
you’ve got for Ott’s jail, now!”

Pat Casey’s eyes were on Wilson
Brule, who smiled thinly and held the handkerchief to his cut
forehead.

“Neat move, Pat, getting this
Littlejohn gunhawk on your payroll,” Brule chuckled. “But if you
want the pants sued off you, let him jail me as the fool is
threatenin’ to do!”

“We found this one stumblin’
around in the barroom, Sam, cussin’ because he had lost his
scattergun,” Sheriff Ott Sheppard said, shoving Moss Burton
forward. “Want him?”

“I’ll say we want him!” Long
Sam grinned. “Moss Burton is a professional killer. Posin’ as a
bartender was pretty smooth, but it won’t keep his neck out of a
noose. He’s workin’ for Wilson Brule, not Ned Witcher. Provin’
that Moss led the gangs that have wrecked four of Pat Casey’s
trains won’t be too much of a chore.”

“You’re batty!” Moss Burton
glared at Long Sam. “I’ve worked the night shift here at the
Planters’ Palace for the past year!”

“Yeah, you worked the night shift
here,” Long Sam nodded. “But each time a train has been wrecked
on Pat’s line, it just happened to be on yore night off! What
Wilson Brule didn’t tell you and Ned Witcher is that two of Pat
Casey’s best special agents have been checking and double-checking
on the whole bunch of you here who were doing Brule’s dirty work!”

“So he admits he’s workin’ for
Wilson Brule!’“ Long Sam said quickly. “He’ll wish he hadn’t
been! Brule will toss him to the hangman in order to save his own
neck.”

“Not me, feller!” Moss Burton
said. “Some of Pat Casey’s railroad bulls have been checkin’,
or you wouldn’t know that nothin’ happened to Casey’s trains
only on the nights I was off duty. Maybe Brule didn’t tip me off—”

Brule, a raging oath on his lips,
flipped out a gun, pumped three slugs into Moss Burton’s body
before Long Sam could slap the raging man down with a gun barrel.
Long Sam whacked him again, then wrenched the gun out of his fingers,
slammed him down in a chair at the end of the shiny desk.

“He killed Moss Burton deader’n
a cracked bedbug, Sam!” big Ott Sheppard wailed. “Why didn’t
you shoot him before he could do that? Now we ain’t got a chance of
pinnin’ anything on Brule.”

“Nothin’ except cold-blooded
murder, since Moss Burton was not only disarmed but in our custody!”
Long Sam said gravely. “You see, Ott, I remembered somethin’
about this Brule hellion. Seems that the hooded murderers he bossed
when him and his kind rode after the Civil War as State Police here
in Texas, all feared Brule for one thing—his uncontrollable temper.
I figured if I made Moss Burton blunder, that temper of Brule’s
would let go. But I didn’t aim for him to kill Burton.”

Long Sam looked down at Wilson
Brule, who was white and tense, shocked out of his fit of temper by
the shadow of the noose.

“Let’s go, Brule,” Long Sam
said calmly. “I only signed on with Pat Casey last night, and sure
didn’t figure on workin’ myself out of a job this fast. But looks
like I have, for with you jailed on a murder charge I reckon Pat
won’t need me any longer.”

“Take your prisoner on to jail,
Ott!” Pat Casey snapped at the big sheriff. “And Littlejohn, you
need a doctor up here before you do any walkin’ around.”

Ott Sheppard pulled out a pair of
handcuffs, linked Brule’s wrists and took the stiff-faced prisoner
out of the office, shooting a puzzled glance at Pat Casey as he left.

“Now, about this business of you
quittin’ me, Littlejohn!” Pat Casey gritted. “There’s just
nothin’ doin’! Only, we’ll let Joe Fry think you turned in your
badge and left, otherwise the little bulldog will be botherin’ you
plenty.”

“Fry is too mad to make any sense,
but did admit that Ned Witcher told him you were up in Buckhorn
yesterday, aimin’ to ride that trainload of logs down this
mornin’,” Pat Casey grinned. “I told Fry I’d leave it up to
you whether we brought charges against him for attemptin’ to build
a fire on the tracks!”

“Good!” Long Sam chuckled. “Fry
knew better than to pull a fool stunt like that, so we’ll let him
stew in his own juices until I’m patched up, and ready to swim that
Sleeper hoss of mine to the yonder shore of the Rio Grande.”

“But you can’t quit me, Sam!”
Pat Casey howled.

“I’ll think it over, Pat,”
Long Sam sighed. “If I decide to keep on wearin’ one of your
special agent badges, I’ll let you know before I head for Mexico.”